Juan Carlos Gomez-Verjan

Instituto Nacional De Geriatría · División de Ciencias Basicas

Parkinson's disease (PD) is the second most common neurodegenerative disease in older individuals worldwide. Pharmacological treatment for such a disease consists of drugs such as monoamine oxidase B (MAO-B) inhibitors to increase dopamine concentration in the brain. However, such drugs have adverse reactions that limit their use for extended perio...

Osteosarcopenic obesity (OSO) has been associated with increase immobility, falls, fractures, and other dysfunctions, which could increase mortality risk during aging. However, its etiology remains unknown. Recent studies revealed that sedentarism, fat gain, and epigenetic regulators are critical in its development. One effective intervention to pr...

Identifying relationships between components of an index helps to gain a better understanding of the condition they define. The Frailty Index (FI) measures the global health of individuals and can be used to predict outcomes as mortality. Previously, we modelled the relationship between the FI components (deficits) and death through an undirected g...

Barker's hypothesis affirms that undernourishment in early-life induces metabolic reprogramming that compromises organism functions later in life, leading to age-related diseases. We are exposed to environmental and social conditions that impact our life trajectories, leading to ageing phenotypes as we grow. Epigenetic mechanisms constitute the lin...

Acute ischemic stroke (AIS) is among the main causes of mortality worldwide. A rapid and opportune diagnosis is crucial to improve a patient’s outcomes; despite the current advanced image technologies for diagnosis, their implementation is challenging. MicroRNAs have been recognized as useful as biomarkers since they are specific and stable for cha...

Theophylline (3-methyxanthine) is a historically prominent drug used to treat respiratory diseases, alone or in combination with other drugs. The rapid onset of the COVID-19 pandemic urged the development of effective pharmacological treatments to directly attack the development of new variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and possess a therapeutical ba...

spatio-temporal analysis of the first wave of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic in Mexico (April to September 2020) was performed by state. Descriptive analyses through diagrams, mapping, animations and time series representations were carried out. Greater risks were observed at certain times in specific regions. Various trends and clusters were...

Identifying relationships between components of an index helps to have a better understanding of the condition they define. The Frailty Index (FI) measures the global health of individuals and can be used to predict outcomes as mortality. Previously, we modelled the relationship between the FI components (deficits) and death through an undirected g...

Introduction Midlife physical capability (PC) is associated with developmental factors in the populations of economically developed countries. As far as we know, there is no information for rural populations of low- and middle-income countries. The aim of the study was to investigate the influence of pre- and postnatal factors on midlife objective...

It has been almost two decades since the first draft of the human genome project was published, and several applications have been developed to understand how the genome works. Among such applications are transcriptomics, which refers to the analysis of gene expression and the whole set of transcripts (coding and noncoding) at a punctual time and p...

Nowadays, digital technologies are transforming the health sector around the world, and the use of digital technology in healthcare is constantly increasing. Digital health is an emerging field of study at the intersection of healthcare and digital technologies, with high impact in the last decade; however, the concept of digital health continues t...

Although pharmacology and epidemiology seem to be quite distant disciplines, both depend on each other. On one hand, it is essential to know the epidemiological importance of diseases to develop novel relevant drugs. On the other hand, the drug development process involves using several epidemiological tools for its studies. The development of a no...

Genomic tools for obtaining and managing epidemiological data associated with chronic and infectious diseases have evolved enormously. Thanks to these advances, diseases with a genetic background, such as cancer or neurodegenerative diseases, have revealed factors that influence their prevalence in specific populations, making it possible to establ...

Systems biology can be defined as the analysis of interactions with different biological systems at different complex levels by using different network approaches. Such advances have permeated to different fields, including those of health known as systems medicine. Such a novel tool has been defined as a holistic approach where human health is int...

Several approaches and methodologies on epidemiology have been performed by using linear models following the maxim of “one possible cause for one probable outcome.” However, analyses of human health involve multiple systems including environmental, genetic, social, physiological, biochemical, and anthropological, which interact simultaneously, lea...

This book covers some of the most novel genetic and genomic concepts in epidemiology, such as geospatial statistics and systems biology from a clinical point of view by explaining molecular applications with accessible human studies. Featuring a comprehensive table of contents, it includes chapters from genomics and epidemiology surveillance to tra...

The health scourge imposed on humanity by the COVID-19 pandemic seems not to recede. This fact warrants refined and novel ideas analyzing different aspects of the illness. One such aspect is related to the observation that most COVID-19 casualties were older males, a tendency also noticed in the epidemics of SARS-CoV in 2003 and the Middle East res...

Abstract: Adverse conditions in early life, including environmental, biological and social influences, are risk factors for ill-health during aging and the onset of age-related disorders. In this context, the recent field of social epigenetics offers a valuable method for establishing the relationships among them However, current clinical studies o...

We study case-fatality risks (risks of dying in sick individuals) corresponding to the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Mexico. Spatio-temporal analysis by state were performed, mainly from April to September 2020, including descriptive analyses through mapping and time series representations, and the fit of linear mixed models and time serie...

COVID-19 is a respiratory disease caused by SARS-CoV-2, which has significantly impacted economic and public healthcare systems worldwide. SARS-CoV-2 is highly lethal in older adults (>65 years old) and in cases with underlying medical conditions, including chronic respiratory diseases, immunosuppression, and cardio-metabolic diseases, including se...

Cellular senescence is a cellular condition that involves significant changes in gene expression and the arrest of cell proliferation. Recently, it has been suggested in experimental models that the elimination of senescent cells with pharmacological methods delays, prevents, and improves multiple adverse outcomes related to age. In this sense, the...

The COVID-19 pandemic has already taken the lives of more than 2 million people worldwide, causing several political and socio-economic disturbances in our daily life. At the time of publication, there are non-effective pharmacological treatments, and vaccine distribution represents an important challenge for all countries. In this sense, research...

p>We performed a chemoinformatic screening with 100 compounds isolated from Mexican natural products to seek active molecules with the potential to be implemented in the pharmacological treatment of such disease (either as a drug itself or as an inspiring molecule to developed active compounds against SARS-CoV-2). We found ten compounds with leadli...

COVID-19 is a respiratory disease caused by SARS-CoV-2, which has significantly impacted economic and public healthcare systems world-wide. SARS-CoV-2 is highly lethal in older adults (>65 years old) and in cases with underlying medical conditions including chronic respiratory diseases, immunosuppression, and cardio-metabolic diseases including sev...

The Islamic Republic of Iran reported its first COVID-19 cases by 19th February 2020, since then it has become one of the most affected countries, with more than 73,000 cases and 4,585 deaths to this date. Spatial modeling could be used to approach an understanding of structural and sociodemographic factors that have impacted COVID-19 spread at a p...

The aging process has been linked to the occurrence of chronic diseases and functional impairments, including cancer, sarcopenia, frailty, metabolic, cardiovascular, and neurodegenerative diseases. Nonetheless, aging is highly variable and heterogeneous and represents a challenge for its characterization. In this sense, intrinsic capacity (IC) stan...

Background: We describe the evidence of the effects of early life exposures on health and aging during adulthood. Methods: A narrative review of cohorts and systematic reviews of studies initiated early in life and followed up to adulthood was conducted. Results: Most studies were carried out in developed countries. The long-term effects of bi...

As the novel COVID-19 disease spreads around the world, the most affected population are those who suffer from the most common chronic diseases, such as obesity, hypertension, and type 2 diabetes, which are quite associated with the so-called age-related diseases. On the other hand, since the Spanish influenza outbreak, humanity has not experienced...

The Islamic Republic of Iran reported its first COVID-19 cases by 19th February 2020, since then it has become one of the most affected countries, with more than 73,000 cases and 4,585 deaths at the date. Spatial modeling could be used to approach an understanding of structural and sociodemographic factors that have impacted COVID-19 spread at a pr...

The world population is rapidly aging—it is estimated that by 1950, around 17% of the population will be elderly. In this context, aging involves several physiological, psychological and highly complex social processes that vary from one person to another. For a long time, medical care for older adults has focused on treating chronic, age-related d...

Human aging is known as a functional decline in the normal homeostatic and physiological processes of the body. Aging per se increases the risk to suffer several age-related diseases, such as neurodegenerative diseases, dementias, cardiovascular dysfunction, cancer, arthritis, sarcopenia, osteoporosis, among others. Recent advances in molecular bio...

One of the main processes involved in genetic expression is the so-called splicing in which the introns present in the precursor messenger RNA are removed, and exons are joined together, forming the mature form of mRNA. Such a process gives quite a versatility and plasticity to the genome since it can generate different mRNA isoforms from a single...

Epigenetics refers to changes in gene function, not resulting from the primary DNA sequence, influenced by the environment. It provides a link between the molecular regulation of the genome and the environmental signals exposed during the life of individuals (including lifestyle, social behavior, development, and nutrition). Notably, early developm...

In the last decades, improvements in different aspects of sanitation, medical care, and nutrition, among others, have permitted an increase in the average lifespan of human population around the world. These advances have stimulated an increased interest in the study of the aging process and age-sensitive characteristics, such as the microbial comm...

Frailty remains a challenge in the aging research area with a number of gaps in knowledge still to be filled. New approaches to its study have been proposed, including the one discussed in this article. We tested frailty as through the use of graphical probabilistic models (bayesian networks) with empirical data. Data from the Mexican Health and Ag...

Senescence is a cellular response characterized by stable growth arrest implicated in several age-related diseases such as cancer, diabetes, neurodegenerative diseases, among others. In this context, senolytic compounds are agents that selectively induce cell death in senescent cells (SNCs), in this sense, recent experimental evidence has shown tha...

Background: Frailty remains a challenge in the aging research area with a number of gaps in knowledge still to be filled. Frailty seems to behave as a network, and in silico evidence is available on this matter. Having in vivo evidence that frailty behaves as a complex network was the main purpose of our study. Methods: Data from the Mexican Hea...

The rotenoids are secondary metabolites isolated from different plant species of the Fabaceae family, some of them well known due to their insecticide and acaricide properties; in addition, some have shown to possess anticancer activity against several human tumor cell lines. In the present contribution we review 25 rotenoids that have been evaluat...

Frailty is an age-associated condition, characterized by an inappropriate response to stress that results in a higher frequency of adverse outcomes (e.g., mortality, institutionalization and disability). Some light has been shed over its genetic background, but this is still a matter of debate. In the present study, we used network biology to analy...

We report the effect of the Sesquiterpene Lactones Ambrosin, Incomptine B and Glaucolide E against seven strains of Trypanosoma cruzi, the etiological agent of Chagas Disease. These compounds were isolated from Parthenium hysterophorus, Decachaeta incompta, and Vernonia liatroides, respectively. We evaluated by flow cytometry the viability of epima...

Mammea-type coumarins are a particular type of secondary metabolites biosynthesized by the tropical rainforest tree Calophyllum Brasiliense, which is distributed from South America to Mexico. Particularly, mammea A/BA and A/BB (alone or as a mixture) possess biological properties such as cytotoxic and antitumoral activities, however, most of its mo...

Cacalolides are a kind of sesquiterpenoids natural compounds synthesized by Psacalium decompositum (A. Gray) H. Rob. & Brettell or Psacalium peltatum (Kunth) Cass. Antioxidant and hypoglycemic effects have been found for cacalolides such as cacalol, cacalone or maturine, however, their effects on inflammatory processes are still largely unclear. Th...

Ageing is one of the most complex processes in nature; how could we prevent the associated biological changes and chronic diseases that string along with this process, is a challenge in healthcare around the world. Recent advances in next-generation sequencing have reached a stage where it is possible to know from a specific tissue the most abundan...

Population growth and fast evolution of several technologies into almost every corner of human activities have become a constant in the modern society nowadays. Consequently, an enormous amount of information is generated every day, from many sources, such as: web information, mobile phones, social media, scientific reports, medical and healthcare...

Human macrophage migration inhibitory factor (MIF) is a cytokine that plays a role in several metabolic and inflammatory processes. Single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) -173 G/C (rs755622) on MIF gene has been associated with numerous diseases, such as arthritis and cancer. However, most of the reports concerning the association of MIF with these a...

The chlorogenic acid (CGA) is a natural product isolated from Cecropia obtusifolia, which possesses several pharmacological properties, such as: anti-carcinogenic, neuroprotective, antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, hypoglycemic, and hypolipidemic. In relation to its effects on the hyperglycemia and hypertriglyceridemia, few is known about the mechani...

Under standard conditions NF-κB is spread in the body of the neuron. Cytoskeleton was stained green with Phalloidin 488: nuclei were stained blue with Hoechst and in NF-κB protein was labeled in red. (MP4)

Neurons treated with both PRL/Glu maintains the NF-κB activation. Cytoskeleton was stained green with Phalloidin 488: nuclei were stained blue with Hoechst and in NF-κB protein was labeled in red. (MP4)

Prolactin (PRL) is a peptidic hormone that displays pleiotropic functions in the organism including different actions in the brain. PRL exerts a neuroprotective effect against excitotoxicity produced by glutamate (Glu) or kainic acid in both in vitro and in vivo models. It is well known that Glu excitotoxicity causes cell death through apoptotic or...

The Calophyllum genus is a large group of tropical tree species belonging to the Calophyllaceae family (180–200 species) that represents an important source of natural products and is mainly distributed in the tropical regions of Asia, Africa, the Americas, Australasia, and the Pacific Islands [7]. These species contain coumarins and xanthones with...

In México, Pachyrhizus erosus (Fabaceae) commonly called "jícama", is widely known for its edible tubers. It is cultivated since the pre-Columbian period, and the powdered seeds have been used for the treatment of mange, lice, and fleas, due to their content of rotenone, a well-known insecticidal compound. On the other hand, P. ferrugineus, a wild...

Calophyllum brasiliense (Calophyllaceae) is a tropical rain forest tree, mainly distributed in South and Central America. It is an important source of bioactive natural products like, for instance soulatrolide, and mammea type coumarins. Soulatrolide is a tetracyclic dipyranocoumarins and a potent inhibitor of HIV-1 reverse transcriptase and Mycoba...

Tropical trees of Calophyllum genus (Calophyllaceae) have chemical and biological importance as potential source of secondary active metabolites which can lead to the development of new drugs. Research on this species has been rising since 1992 due to the discovering of anti-HIV properties of Calanolide A found in Calophyllum inophyllum leaves. Thi...

The rotenoids are secondary metabolites isolated from different plant species of the Fabaceae family, some of them well known due to their insecticide and acaricide properties; in addition, some have shown to possess anticancer activity against several human tumor cell lines. In the present contribution we review 25 rotenoids that have been evaluat...

Pachyrhizus erosus (Fabaceae) is a herb commonly known as 'yam bean', which has been cultivated in México since pre-Columbian times for its edible tubers. The seeds are also known for their acaricidal and insecticidal properties due to rotenone and other isoflavonoid contents. Rotenone has exhibited cytotoxic activity against several human tumour c...

The aim of this study was to determine the cellular and molecular mechanisms of cell death induced by mammea A/BA and A/BB (3 : 1) on K562 cells. These compounds were isolated from Calophyllum brasiliense and its cytotoxicity was tested using the 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide assay. Cell death was evaluated by Termina...

En el presente trabajo se describen los estudios químicos y farmacológicos realizados en torno a Justicia spicigera, conocida como "Muitle" dentro de la medicina tradicional de México, en donde es recomendada para tratar la disentería, las infecciones de la piel y los riñones, así como para tratar la anemia. Los estudios incluyeron pruebas de efica...

In this chapter we review the studies of the species most widely used in Asia and Latin America and their chemistry and biological properties are compared

The main use of stem bark infusions of Alnus acuminata ssp. arguta (Schlecht.) Furlow (Betulaceae) includes treatments for acute inflammation in Mexican traditional medicine. n-Hexane (CHE), chloroform (CCE), and methanol (CME) extracts of the stem bark were investigated for anti-inflammatory activity and its safety. The anti-inflammatory effects o...